Today’s New York Times examines a fascinating effort to somehow save inner-city public education.
In just seven years, [Steve] Barr’s Green Dot Public Schools organization has founded 10 charter high schools and has won approval to open 10 more. Now, in his most aggressive challenge to the [Los Angeles] public school system, he is fighting to seize control of Locke Senior High, a gang-ridden school in Watts known as one of the city’s worst. A 15-year-old girl was killed by gunfire there in 2005.
So Mr. Barr is your typical right-wing wacko out to destroy public education, right?
Wrong.
… While most charters have nonunion teachers and are often called union busters by opponents, Mr. Barr, a former fund-raiser for the California Democratic Party and co-founder of Rock the Vote, prefers to work with organized labor.
How does he do it?
I’ve got a feeling the answer can be found in 297 missing pages.
Teachers at Green Dot schools have a contract, though one less rigid than at other Los Angeles schools.
… The union representing Green Dot teachers, Association de Maestros Unidos, has a 33-page contract that offers competitive salaries but no tenure, and it allows class schedule and other instructional flexibility outlawed by the 330-page contract governing most Los Angeles schools.
Andrew J. Rotherham, who worked in the Clinton White House and is co-director of Education Sector, a research group in Washington, said, “Green Dot is mobilizing parents in poor neighborhoods and offering an alternative for frustrated teachers, and that’s scrambling the cozy power arrangements between the school district and the union to a degree not seen anywhere else.”
Tactics aside, the chain has had promising results. An early high school that Green Dot founded, Ànimo Inglewood, has raised the percent of students proficient in math by 40 points since 2003, and 79 percent of its students from the class of 2006 went on to college. Green Dot keeps enrollment in its high schools below 525. Incoming freshmen who need it remedial tutoring receive it, and thereafter pursue a college-prep curriculum.
I couldn’t care less that Steve Barr leans left.
He’s getting the job done. More power to him.
7 Responses to “What’s in the 297 missing pages?”
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July 24th, 2007 at 10:24 am
It will be left to the private sector to solve the public school failure. The union is the biggest road block. Eventually, if enough students migrate to privately funded education - perhaps the public school system will be irrelevant. As it stands, the public school system is just another government funded jobs program - education is no longer the mission
July 24th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Don’t believe me - pick up the Comical and read about your new Harris County Community College chief administrator.
July 24th, 2007 at 10:29 am
This is great!
I guess it’s the “Nixon/China syndrome” - it has taken a liberal to get away with doing something like this. A conservative would be fried alive.
July 24th, 2007 at 11:23 am
A good idea is a good idea no matter the source, left or right. Now, the thing that will actually make it work is for there to be real discipline in those schools and for parents to stay involved and do their part. School isn’t an 18 yr long government funded baby sitting program like some think!
July 24th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Steve Barr was savvy enough to sideswipe the teachers’ unions rather than engage in a head-on collision. Instead of arguing with them about who was at fault, he offered to help them buy a new car. He turned the rank and file teachers against their own unions by addressing their daily concerns and convincing them he was on their side.
Conservatives should have taken this approach more often and I think they would have had more success.
It remains to be seen whether the curriculum will be a return to more classical education or just more of the same mulicultural drivel we see now. But it is hard to argue with Barr’s promise of 90% of the budget devoted to classroom instruction. The ultimate test will be what success, if any, he can achieve in NYC with the evil shrew, Randi Weingarten, running the show there.
July 24th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
texpat you are so correct. This guy went and basically pulled a Ronald Regan, HE went to the people who do the jobs to get support. It is the teachers who should have the power in the AFT not the beaurocrats. His is the first step and we need to keep an eye on what he does and if we can support his efforts look for ways to do so.
July 24th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
This is great success, hopefully more will copy him.